Tehran: Iran, which long castigated the United States as the "Great Satan", is to promote its tourist potential on America's CNN television station and Britain's BBC, the country's vice-president for tourism Hossein Marachi has revealed to AFP.

Tense relations between Tehran and Washington will not stop Iran from exploiting its attractions on the US cable network, said Marachi, who insists US sanctions preventing American companies from trading with Iran "will not apply in this instance".

Both BBC and CNN campaigns should start within two months under a one-year contract, the value of which Marachi did not disclose.

Kevin Young, acting head of public relations for BBC World, said: "There have been long discussions about this and we're optimistic the campaign will be launched but it's not been finalised yet."

He added that no actual starting date had been decided and the ads would only be shown on the state-funded broadcaster's semi-commercial BBC World.

"We would be looking at what we call a spot campaign, which is a straightforward commercial campaign for 30- or 60-second adverts that would appear for a period of six months."

Spokesman Nigel Pritchard for CNN international in Atlanta said only: "We can't comment on commercial deals unless they are in place. There is no deal in place."

Marachi said Iran would provide footage for the slots.

"They will show Iranian tourist sites. "You'll not see Friday prayers," he added with a smile.

Tehran's aim is not to persuade Americans to visit the country, but to have an impact on the two networks' worldwide audiences so Iran can develop an industry, largely neglected given its potential.

Global network campaigns will be followed by ads on local channels in 20 countries in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians living in the United States "will also be targeted and we will try to reach them via Iranian satellite channels" although American audiences are not currently a priority.

"The United States will be targeted later," he said.

However, said Marachi, "counter revolutionary" channels controlled by Iranian exiles, mostly broadcast from Los Angeles, will not be asked to show the ads.

According to Marachi, fewer than 500 Americans visit Iran every year. "We don't have a policy aimed at drawing American tourists, we don't give them visas easily," he said.

Americans entering Iran are fingerprinted, following Washington's decision to do the same with Iranian citizens entering the US.

The Iranian visa application process is also complex and drawn out, as it is for Iranians wanting to visit the United States.

Iran, which has an impressive but under-exploited array of cultural sites, wants to raise its current one million foreign visitors annually to 20 million in 20 years' time, said Marachi.

At three times the size of France, Iran is home to such exceptional sites as the ancient capital of Persepolis, the Islamic architectural showcase of Isfahan and the desert city of Yazd.

The Islamic republic also offers a range of landscapes, from the forests of the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Gulf, passing by the central deserts and the Alborz mountain range, popular with Iranian and foreign skiers alike.

But the country suffers more from a lack of hotels and shortcomings in its transport system than from years of isolation since the 1979 Islamic Revolution or from its image abroad as defying the international community over its nuclear programme and making foreign women wear headscarves, said Marachi.

"We will invest 30 billion dollars over the next five years" to eliminate the deficiencies, he said.

Marachi nevertheless acknowledges that tourists will have to comply with local customs and visiting foreign women should keep their hair covered in public.

"Tourism in Iran currently brings in 500 million dollars a year and the aim is to reach 25 billion in 20 years' time," he said.

"From now on, foreign tourists can get a one-week visa on arrival at Tehran airport and this visa can be renewed once. In a month's time, you will be able to get a tourist visa over the Internet," said Marachi.

The article is no longer available for free online but the abstract says it all:

EDITORIAL DESK | April 11, 2003, Friday
The News We Kept To Ourselves

By Eason Jordan (NYT) 808 words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 25 , Column 2
ABSTRACT - Op-Ed article by Eason Jordan, chief news executive of CNN, says now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, world can expect to hear many gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about decades of torment; says he has tales as well, learned during 13 trips he made to Baghdad over last 12 years to lobby government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders; says he saw and heard awful things that he could not report because doing so would have jeopardized lives of Iraqis, particularly those on CNN's Baghdad staff; says secret police terrorized all Iraqis working for international press services; says some vanished forever, others disppeared and then surfaced later with tales of being tortured; says one of CNN's Iraqi cameramen was abducted, beaten and horribly tortured; says he is still haunted by story of woman captured by secret police after speaking with CNN on phone; says plastic bag containing her body parts was left on doorstep of her family's home; drawing (M)

It is too kind to call CNN's decade of turning a blind eye to the brutality of Iraq under Saddam Hussein a failure because it was a conscious decision of the network's senior news executives to trade favorable coverage of Iraq for access to a "hot story". In fact, a "story" that had MADE CNN in the days when Peter Arnett was the "last man out" of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War.

CNN's complicity - and the failure of the other news organizations described by Jordan (as well as The New York Times' John Burns in the book Embedded) - is coming home to roost as media outlets around the world make the claim without contradiction that there is no difference between Iraq under Saddam and Iraq under U.S. occupation. Where is the CNN file footage of interviews with Saddam's torture victims? Where are the shocking Saddam torture photos?

Despite their record of complicity in covering up years of brutality and torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, CNN has lost no time in running endless reports on the Iraqi prison photos. Besides practically non-stop reports on the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse story, CNN's line up has been stocked with guests booked to discuss the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse story. Take a look at yesterday's list from TND's Daily Run Down:

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